Serenity Code Name: Usagi
by Mangus1
Summary: Rating may be a bit high but will be needed in later chapters, As i try and write a thriller about Usagi an idependant agent for Dr M, Critisim welcome as first time writer
1. Prologue

Disclimer I do not own Sailormoon or Gundam Wing, I am to lazy to post tis in every chapter so it will be here only.  
  
Please review  
  
  
  
Prologue  
  
"Beep. Beep. Beep"  
  
Usagi looked over at the laptop, a new mission, about time she was beginning to run low on funds, acting as an independent rebel had its perks but the fact payment was only received as jobs were completed Marjory sucked. The fact that she was fighting for peace of the colonies came second to the fact that deniability fuck you over every time.  
  
Grabbing a brew from the kitchen Usagi sat down to see what Dr M had cooked up for her to do.  
  
You are to proceed to Estonia and eliminate the Oz base that is attempting to hack through the world markets to gain sensitive financial and military information that would further there aim.  
  
Of course this can not be linked to our firm and must be accomplished on your own, however a contact named Howard will be able to supply your needs, you must take this base out before it goes moves.  
  
Dr M.  
  
Typical stiff me over once again, it looked like it was time for Usagi to go and find out where Estonia was. 


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1  
  
32 hours later found Usagi approaching Howard after there initial contact by phone during the flight from the UK.  
  
Howard was a happy teddy the moment he caught sight of Usagi beside his beloved Honda in the noisy car park.  
  
'Yo you Usagi?'  
  
'Yes, Howard I presume?'  
  
'That's me my man, we better get going to get your stuff.'  
  
'Where do we go now, Howard?'  
  
'A block.' He already had the Honda's bonnet open.  
  
'A block?'  
  
'You know, an apartment.'  
  
There were two metallic bangs as the starter motor got a reminder as to what it did for a living.  
  
The Honda eventually fired up and Howard drove the both of them out of the car park and turned right, towards the roundabout. The bars all had enormous doormen standing under their flashing neon to control the evening's trade. Turning left this time at the roundabout, away from the river, we drove past even more establishments and parked trucks.  
  
The bars' lights slowly disappeared and the darkness took over again. Now apartment blocks and industrial buildings lined the road, in between pylons and shells of crumbling masonry.  
  
Fighting with two trucks that were trying to overtake each other, both throwing up waves of ice and snow, they turned left without indicating, then left again down a narrow street, with apartments to the left and a tall wall to the right.  
  
Howard threw the Honda into the side of the road and jumped out. 'Wait here, my man.'  
  
Skirting the inevitable pylon leg, he headed for the main door of one of the blocks. He stopped and checked the stencilling, gave her the thumbs up, then turned back towards the Honda to lock up. Usagi got out and waited.  
  
The loud, constant noise of machinery came from behind the wall as thy entered a very cold, dimly lit hallway, so narrow Usagi could easily have put her arms out and touched both walls. It stank of boiled cabbage. Tiles were missing from the floor and the walls were painted blue, apart from the places where big chunks of plaster had fallen to the ground. Nobody had bothered to sweep them up. The apartment doors, which were one- piece sheet metal with three locks and a spy hole, looked so low that you'd have to stoop when entering.  
  
They waited for the lift by rows of wooden letter boxes. Most of the doors had been ripped from their hinges and the others were just left open. Usagi would have felt more comfortable walking into a South American gaol.  
  
The wall by the lift was covered with a mass of hand painted instructions, all in Russian. It gave her something to look at while listening to the motor groaning inside the shaft.  
  
The machinery stopped with a loud shudder and the doors opened. They entered an aluminium box, its panelling dented everywhere it was possible for boots to have connected. It reeked of urine. Howard hit the button for the fourth floor and they lurched upwards, the lift stopping suddenly every few feet, then starting again, as if it had forgotten where to go. Eventually they reached the fourth floor and the doors opened into semi darkness. Usagi let him step out ahead of her. Turning left, Howard stumbled, and as Usagi followed she found out why: a young kid was curled up on the floor.  
  
As the doors slammed shut again, cutting out even more of the dim light, She bent down to examine his small body, bulked out by two or three badly knitted jumpers. By his head lay two empty crisp packets and thick, dried snot hung from his nostrils to his mouth. He was breathing and he wasn't bleeding, but even in the feeble light from the ceiling bulb it was obvious that he was in a shit state. Zits covered the area around his mouth and saliva dribbled from his lips.  
  
Howard looked down at the boy with total disinterest. He kicked the bags, turned away and carried on walking. Usagi dragged the local glue head out of the way of the lift and followed.  
  
Turing left along a corridor, Howard singing some Russian rap song and pulling a string of keys from his jacket. Reaching the door right at the end, he messed about, trying to work out which key went where until finally it opened, and then groping for the light switch.  
  
The room they entered definitely wasn't the source of the boiled-cabbage stench. Usagi could smell the heavy odour of wooden crates and gun oil; She would have known that smell anywhere. This one took her straight back to the age of six and the very first day She started her training back in '86 where Dr M had begun creating what she was today.  
  
The inevitable single bulb lit up a very small room, no more than a couple of metres square. There were two doors leading off; Howard went through the one on the left and Usagi followed, closing the front door behind her and throwing all the locks.  
  
Only one of the four bulbs worked in the ceiling cluster that any retro family would have been proud of. The small room was stacked with wooden crates, waxed cardboard boxes and loose explosive ordnance, all stencilled with Cyrillic script. The whole lot looked very Chad - Chad that was dangerously past its use-by date.  
  
Nearest to Usagi was a stack of brown wooden boxes with rope handles. Lifting the lid off the top of one, she recognized the dull green bedpan shapes at once. Howard, grinning from ear to ear, made the noise of an explosion, his hands flying everywhere. He seemed to know they were land- mines, too. 'See, my man, I get what you want. Guarantee of satisfaction, yes?'  
  
Usagi just nodded as she looked around some more. Piles of other kit lay wrapped in brown military greaseproof paper. Elsewhere, damp cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other had collapsed, spilling their contents onto the floorboards. Lying in a corner were half a dozen electric detonators, aluminium tubes about the size of a quarter-smoked cigarette with two eighteen-inch silver wire leads coming out of one end. The silver leads were loose, not twisted together, which was frightening stuff: it meant they were ready to act as antennae for any stray extraneous electricity - a radio wave, say, or energy from a mobile phone - to set them off and probably all the rest of the shit in there, too. This place was a nightmare. It seemed the Russians hadn't been too fussed about where this kind of stuff ended up in the early alliance takeover.  
  
Picking up the detonators one by one, Usagi twisted the leads together to close the circuit, then mooched around the rest of the kit, ripping open cardboard boxes. Howard did the same, either to make her think he knew what he was doing or just out of curiosity Usagi gripped his arm and shook her head, not wanting him to play with anything. It would be nice to get out of here with all her gear and without him losing any more fingers.  
  
He looked hurt, so once she'd finished sorting the detonators out and had stored them in an empty ammo box, as he moved under the light, she spotted some dark-green detonator cord. It wasn't in its handy 200-metre reel as she would have liked; there seemed to be two metres here, another ten metres there, but then she saw a partly used reel with maybe eighty or ninety metres left, which would certainly do the trick.  
  
Usagi put the reel of det cord to one side and went to check the other rooms. That was easy enough because each was about the size of a broom cup board; there was a tiny kitchen-cum-bathroom cum-toilet arrangement and a bedroom that was even smaller. What she was looking for was plastic explosive, but there wasn't any. The only PE around here was in the Anti-MS Mines, and there were certainly enough of those to give her P for Plenty  
  
Usagi returned to the main room and lifted one of them from the open box. These were either TM 40s or 46s, She could never remember which was which; all She knew was that one was made of metal and the other of plastic. These ones were metal, about a foot in diameter and weighed around twenty pounds, of which over twelve pounds was PE. They were shaped like old-fashioned brass bed-warmers, the sort that hangs on stone fireplaces, alongside the horse brasses, in country pubs. Instead of the long broomstick, these things had a swivelling carry handle, like on the side of a mess tin.  
  
It was going to be a pain in the arse to get the PE out of these things, but what was she expecting? Having to act completely independently had its draw backs.  
  
Placing the mine on the bare floorboards, Usagi tried to unscrew the cap, which was in the centre of the top. Before laying it, all you had to do was replace the cap with a detonation device - normally a fuse and detonator combination- then stand well back and wait for a mobile suit to set it off.  
  
When it eventually started to move, shifting the years of grime that had formed a seal, She knew at once that it was really old ordnance. The smell of marzipan hit her nostrils. The greenish explosive had become obsolete in recent years. It still worked, it did the job, but the nitro-glycerine fucked up not only mobile suits, but also the head and skin of anyone preparing it. You were guaranteed a fearsome headache if you worked with it in a confined space and extreme pain if you got it on a cut.  
  
Between them they carried several boxes down to the car, passing the kid still lying where Usagi had left him. On the last trip down, Howard locked up the flat and they stood by the Honda with the hum and groan of the factory in the background. He was going to walk from there as he wanted to go and see a friend.  
  
Usagi said goodbye, feeling more than a bit sorry for him. Like everything else in this place, he, too, was just fucked over.  
  
'Thanks a lot, mate, and I'll bring the car back in about two days.'  
  
She shook his cold hand and then grabbed the door handle as he walked away.  
  
He called after me. 'Yo, Usagi. Hey. . .' There was suddenly a less- confident tone in his voice. 'Can I ... can I come to Sanc with you?'  
  
Usagi didn't look back, just wanting to get on my way. 'Why?'  
  
'I can work for you. My English is cool.'  
  
I could hear him getting closer. 'Let me go with you, man. Everything will be cool. I want to go to Sanc and then I will go to America.'  
  
'Tell you what, I'll be back soon and we'll talk about it, OK?'  
  
'When?'  
  
'Like I said, two days.'  
  
He shook Usagi's hand again with all the fingers he had left. 'Cool. I'll see you soon, Usagi. It'll be cool. I will sell my car, and . . . . and get new clothes.' He virtually skipped back up the road, waving at her, thinking about his new life as she gave the starter motor a bit of hammer, fired it up and did a three-point turn to back out onto the main, passing Howard on the way.  
  
She'd only driven a hundred metres when she stopped and put the car in reverse. {Fuck it, I couldn't do this}.  
  
As she drew alongside and wound down the window he greeted her with a big smile. 'What's up, my man?'  
  
'I'm sorry Howard, I can't take you' - Usagi corrected herself - 'will not take you to the Sanc kingdom.'  
  
His shoulders and face slumped. 'Why not, man. Why not? You just said, man...'  
  
She felt like an arsehole. 'They won't let you in. You're Russian. You need visas and all that stuff. And even if they do, you won't be able to stay with me. I don't have a house and I haven't got any work I can give you. I'm really sorry, but I can't and I won't do it. That's it, mate. I'll drop the car off in two days.'  
  
And that was it. Usagi wound the window up and headed back into the centre of town, so she knew where she was and could pick up the main Narva-Tallinn road again.  
  
She could have lied to him, but she remembered as a kid all the trips that her parents were going to take her on, all the presents she was going to be given, all the promises of nice holidays and all the rest of the shit that had never happened. It was just said to keep her quiet. She couldn't have let Howard get all sparked up, burning bridges, and all for nothing. Dr M was right: sometimes it's better to flick people off with the truth.  
  
Usagi found Her bearings in town and headed west. Her destination was a hotel room where she could prepare all the shit she had in the boot.  
  
She was still feeling quite sorry for Howard; not for dumping him, because She knew it was the right thing to do, but because of what the future held for him. Absolute jack shit. 


End file.
